How do we define plagiarism in literature? In this wide-ranging and innovative study, Muhsin J. al-Musawi examines debates surrounding literary authenticity across Arabic and Islamic culture over seven centuries. Al-Musawi argues that intertextual borrowing was driven by personal desire alongside the competitive economy of the Abbasid Islamic Empire. Here, accusations of plagiarism had wide-ranging consequences, as competition among poets and writers grew fierce, while philologists and critics served as public arbiters over controversies of alleged poetic thefts. Taking in an extensive remit of Arabic sources, from Persian writers to the poets of Andalusia and Morocco, al-Musawi extends his argument all the way to Ibrāhīm ᶜAbd al-Qādir al-Māzinī's writing in Egypt and the Iraqi poet Nāzik al-Malā՚ikah's work in the twentieth century to present 'theft' as a necessary condition of creative production in Arabic literature. As a result, this study sheds light on a vast yet understudied aspect of the Arabic literary tradition, while raising important questions surrounding the rising challenge of artificial intelligence in matters of academic integrity.

‘In a series of carefully researched and annotated chapters, al-Musawi reveals his comprehensive knowledge of not only the entire Arabic literary tradition in all its periods, but also of theoretical research devoted to literary genres in general and Arabic literature in particular. The resulting work is a major addition to historical and theoretical studies on the Arabic literary tradition.’

Roger Allen - University of Pennsylvania

‘A tour de force of intellectual erudition and critical insight, Poetic Desire and Literary Thievery reclaims the long-misunderstood lexicon and intricate dynamics of ‘theft’ within the vast classical and postclassical Arabic literary tradition. This book powerfully reshapes our understanding of interpoetic discourse and stands as yet another landmark contribution to Arabic literary criticism and comparative literary and cultural studies by arguably the field’s most distinguished and prolific scholar.’

Nizar F. Hermes - University of Virginia

‘A sweeping study of poetic borrowing in Arabic literature, this book explores the economies of desire, rivalry, and creativity that shaped centuries of verse - where imitation was art, theft could be praise, and every poem part of a rich, ever-contested literary marketplace.’

Bilal Orfali - American University of Beirut